Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 November 1892 — SOMEWHAT CURIOUS. [ARTICLE]

SOMEWHAT CURIOUS.

} No British sovereign has vetoed » Parliamentary bill during the past 185 years. Only one slfl,ooo legal tender note out of an issue of four thousand U nauLextant. The tonnage of American railways exceeds that of all the railroads in the world. Married couples in Norway are privileged to ride on railroads at a fair and a batL . - Of the public school teachers in the United States more than 05 per cent, are women. Stockings were first used in the eleventh century. Before that cloth bandages were used on the feet. At the death of Queen Elizabeth 3 OJ4 dresses were in her wardrobe, of which two only were of silk. Muffs were first used bv dootofs to keep their fingers soft, and were adopted by ladies about 1550, The Roman Emperor Tiberius prohibited men from wearing silk. II was deemed only fit for women. Gen. R. E. Lee’s signature ,is worth $lO in the autograph market, General McClellan’s $3 and General Sherman’s;siL : Argentine Regublic lays claim to the longest horse railroad in the world, which runs from Buenos Ayres to San Martin, a distance oi about fifty miles. The drummer in Servian regiments never carries the drum. It is placed on a two wheeled cart, which is drawn by a big dog just in advance of the drummer. A society was organized in New. York in 17t>5 for the encouragement of American woolens. The society’s rules forbade eating mutton or lamb or the slaughter of sheep. The cent which in 1785, George Washington dropped on the Ira Mead homestead, near Turk Hill, Conn., has been recently found, and the finder of it is an immensely proud man.- ~ r '

In 1860 the wealth of Great Britain exceeded that of the Baited States nearly 35 per cent. In 1888 the wealth of the United States was more titan 25 per cent, greater than that of Great Britain. Recent astronomical calculations have caused the ‘‘star gazers” to announce that the surface of the moot) is about as great as that of Africa and Australia combined, or about equal to the area of North and South America, without the islands. The first patent in the United States was issued July 31, 1790, to Samuel Hopkins for making pot and pearl ashes. Four hundred and thirty-three thousand four hundred and thirty-six patents wero issued during tho first one hundred years of the Patent Office. In Spain, about 1630, the hoopskirts became so monstrous that an edict was issued commanding their reduction and ordering the confiscation of hoop-skirts above the regulation size. The attempts to carry out the edict caused innumerable, riots, and were finally abandoned. The most marvelous of clocks has been built by a Black Forest maker and sold for SLOjO. Besides doing everything that most clocks do in the matter of time and calendar, ifsEowa the ti me in Bertin, St. Petersburg, Madeira, Shanghai, Calcutta, Montreal. San Fraucisco, Melbourne und Gr eeDwluka--————

Granite is the lowest rock in the earth’s crust. It is the bed rock of the world. It shows no evidence of animal or vegetable life. It is from two to ten times as thick as the united thickness of all the other rocks. It is the parent rock from which all other rocks have been either directdirectiv or indirectly derived. A French scientist obtained the remarkable yield of forty-two tons of potatoes per acre by treating the seed tubers with sulphate of ammonia. Be steeped the potatoes for twenty-four hours in a solution of six pounds of saltpeter, six pounds of sulphate of ammonia and tweaty--sve gallons of water. He then allowed them to stand and drain for a day, in order that*, their buds might swell before planting them.